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Sunday, November 09, 2014

Mexico: Struggle builds for the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students

From A World to Win News Service:

.

In Mexico, the second "Stop the war on
the people – national week of resistance" ended 26 October with a march
through poor and working class neighbourhoods in towns near the capital. A
major focus of the week's activities – and the country's brewing political
crisis – was the police kidnapping of 43 Ayotzinapa teachers' college students
in Iquala 26 September, when police and civilians also shot and killed six
people.

The week began with a forum at the national
university (UNAM) spotlighting the federal government's role in this crime, the
murders of Central American immigrants passing through Mexico and the
"femincides", the monstrous wave of women being killed or disappeared
in the northern border state of Juarez.

Activities also included a film showing
about the struggle for the right to abortion, a rally against violence against
women and a reading of a monologue about the roles patriarchal society imposes
on them, a memorial to a UNAM political activist murdered three years ago, and
an evening of rap and hip-hop "to denounce the government and the
capitalist system, and call for resistance and for people to raise their head
to continue struggling and advance toward the revolutionary change humanity
needs."

The National Resistance Network in Mexico sent
a solidarity message to the "Month of resistance to police brutality,
repression and the criminalization of a generation" in the United States.

A broad and expanding spectrum of people is
propelling the movement to demand that the students be brought back alive, or
their fate explained. For portraits of the 43 and other visual statements by
dozens of artists, see http:/ilustradoresconayotzinapa.tumblr.com

The following is a slightly abridged
article, "14 crimes and lies by the federal government in the Ayotzinapa
case", from Aurora
Roja, blog of the Revolutionary Communist Organization (OCR) of Mexico.
(aurora-roja.blogspot.com, in Spanish)

The facts demonstrate that the federal
government headed by President EnriquePeñaNieto and the armed forces cooperated with
the massacre of six people in Iguala and the disappearance of the 43 students
from the Ayotzinapa teachers' college; and since then they have been lying and
covering up the facts about this brutal crime. At times they have gone so far as
to try, absurdly, to implicate these students in organized crime activities,
even though students have had to beg for money just to be able to pay their
school expenses. No matter what, the authorities insist, the responsibility for
what happened lies purely with the Iguala mayor, whom they helped conveniently
drop out of sight. What are the facts?

1. The army openly
cooperated with the massacre:The 27thinfantry battalion never tried to stop
the shooting and hunting down of the students during the night of 26 September
in Iguala, even though that was their legal duty. They let the shooting go on
for over an hour, and two or more students were kidnapped from almost in front
of their barracks. When the army ventured out onto the streets three hours
later, after a second attack in which two more students were killed, it was to
harass the victims of this crime. They approached a group of students who were
carrying their classmate Edgar Andres Vargas, critically wounded in the mouth,
to a private clinic. "They showed up with their guns locked and loaded,
roughing us up, confiscating our mobiles and cursing at us. They searched all
three floors of the hospital... and wouldn't let the on-duty doctor take care
of Edgar. The bastards kept saying, "You're going to have to deal with
real men now. Don't bawl!" The student almost died because they wouldn't
let him get medical treatment. And they snapped at the students, "You
asked for it," clearly justifying the massacre. When they demanded that
the students give their names, the soldiers threatened that they had better
give their real names or no one was going be able to find them, threatening to
make them disappear, as had happened to their classmates." (Sources:
interview by Blanche Petrich,La
Jornada online,11 October
2014; Guadalupe Lizzaraga,Los
Angeles Pressonline, 30
September 2014. Eyewitness account of a student on the Carmen Aristegui show,
30 October 2014)

2. Possible participation of federal agents
in covering up the attacks:Who were the "armed men in civilian clothings" who
shot at the students during the two attacks in Iquala, in one instance when
they killed three students and wounded more than 20 more, and the other on the
Santa Teresa roadway, leading to the death of a young football player, the
team's bus driver and a woman going by in a taxi? It's possible that they were
not just local police and a few drug-gang gunmen as the government claimed. Their
appearance and behaviour are consistent with that of the Federal Police when
they carry out "undercover" operations, like the attack that killed
35 people in Veracruz when a Marine death squad pretended to be from the
Jalisco drug cartel. On many occasions when the Mexican state's forces have
murdered, tortured and disappeared activists and other innocent people, the
state has presented these attacks as the work of "organized crime".
It is also well known that the state uses its narcotics police to eliminate any
kind of political opposition, as was the case with the murder of two polling
place observers for the National Democratic Front during the 1988 presidential
elections. (Sources: articles in various newspapers on 27 and 28 September
2014;Proceso,no.1821; Anabel Hernández,Los senores del narco,p. 195)

3. The federal and state
government knew about the massacre from the start but they let it continue:Another fact that suggests
the possible participation of federal and/or state agents in the massacre is
that the state police and army confronted these same students in Chilpancingo a
few hours before the Iguala attack, stopping the youth from commandeering buses
there, and knowing that they were heading to Iguala. Isn't it probable that
they at least informed their colleagues in Iguala to harass the students there?
In any case, then then Guerrero state governor Angel Aguirre admitted that he
knew about the attack in Iguala right away, as did the federal attorney general
and the army (which obviously knew about it through the 27thinfantry battalion stationed there).They all decided not to intervene
and let the attacks continue.(Sources:La Jornadaprint edition, 26 October 2014, p.
6; "Carta abierta desde el extranjero", #AyotzinapaSomosTodos)

4.They deliberately let mayor Jose
Luis Abarca escape:The state
and federal authorities made sure that the people they accuse of being behind
this crime had plenty of time to escape. No arrest warrants were issued for the
mayor, his wife and the chief of police until 26 days after the crime. Isn't
that because the higher authorities were afraid of being implicated by these
heartless criminals? (Sources: press conference by federal prosecutor JesusMurillo Karam, 22 October 2014,Boletin,198/14

5. The federal government refuses to
recognize this case as one of forced disappearance:the representative of the UN Human Rights Commissiondeclared that the three
elements constituting a case of forced disappearance has been established
within 72 hours, legally obligating the federal government to intervene. He
also recommended an "investigation of why the army and state police did
not defend these youth, since the 27thinfantry battalion was in the Iguala
city centre at that moment, and the state government of Angel Aguirre knew
about the attack in real time." Obviously they didn't want an
investigation, for fear of what it might bring to light. (Source:La Jornadaonline, 21 October 2014)

6. The government is indulgent toward
murderer police:Even though the government acknowledges that the municipal
police shot at the students and carried off the disappeared in patrol cars, the
arrested officers have not been accused of homicide or forced disappearance,
just organized delinquency and "illegal deprivation of liberty".
(Source:La Jornada,print edition, 24 October 2014, p. 4)

7. They have tried to
sabotage the investigations:Federal
and state forensic experts deliberately violated international protocols for
exhuming bodies. The UN Human Rights Commission representative declared that
the lack of respect for international protocols would make it difficult or
impossible to obtain reliable DNA evidence (from the bodies dug up in the first
few weeks). Members of
human rights organizations criticized the fact that the site had not been
protected and that neither the site nor the remains had been properly
photographed. The bodies remained in plastic bags without refrigeration for a
long time, and their identification numbers had been poorly placed, making it
harder to determine where they were found. (Source:La Jornadaonline,21 October 2014, and print
edition, 6 October, p. 3)

8. The work of the
forensic anthropology investigation team from Argentina was obstructed, so that they were not
able to take part in the exhumation of the corpses. The Public Ministry
official in charge of the appropriate Guerrero state body refused to grant them
accreditation and the local Public Ministry refused to sign off on the custody
chain for the DNA samples taken by the Argentine team and family members.
(Source: Blanche Petrich,La
Jornadaonline, 11 October
2014, p. 3)

9. The federal
prosecutor's office has repeatedly changed its story with no explanation.On 5 October it was announced that six clandestine mass
graves had been found (although later they said five), thanks to the
confessions of four people who were arrested, and that 28 bodies had been found
in them. The government strongly implied that these were the bodies of the
disappeared students. Then, on 9 October, federal prosecutor Murillo Karam
announced in a press conference that the arrest of another four people the day
before had led to the finding of another four mass graves "presumably
containing the remains of another 15 students." Apparently, the
prosecutor's "presumption" that the rest of the students would be
found in this second group of graves was based on nothing more than subtracting
28 from the total of 43 disappeared to come up with 15. Then, on 14 October,
the prosecutor announced that none of the 28 bodies dug up in the first five
clandestine mass graves was consistent with "the DNA that the families of
these young people have given us" (although the Argentine team had not yet
announced its conclusions on that subject), and that in the second group of
graves "no bodies were found." He didn't give the slightest
explanation for why the so-called testimony of various presumed witnesses,
which he had made such a big deal about, turned out to be false in his new
version of events. Nor did he express the slightest interest in finding out the
identities of the people whose bodies were found burned and buried, or who
committed these horrible crimes.

Now, once again, we are
told that two newly arrested people provided key clues so that a search for
clandestine mass graves can be carried out in another area, and at the same
time that the investigation is being "reoriented" to "find them
alive". They are making a big show with drones, search teams and rewards –
and so far, they have come up with nothing. The only thing clear in all of this
is that the federal government is more interested in covering up the facts than
in investigating them. (Sources: La
Jornada, print edition, 10 October and 15 October 2014, p. 3;Procesoonline,14 October 2014, article by
Marcela Turati)

10. The government has
impeded a serious investigation of the disappeared:The federal and state government have not
checked the location data for the mobiles of the disappeared students, although
the parents have insisted that they should. Repeatedly the army or federal
police have blocked the efforts of the Union of Guerrero Peoples and
Organizations (UPOEG), forbidding them to look for more mass graves or
investigate those they have found. On 23 October the lawyer for the UPOEG
leadership announced that they had found "26 probable mass grave
sites" in the area around Monte Horeb, in Iguala township, and that in six
of these sites they had found "remains of bones, hair and backpacks."
The lawyer also revealed that UPOEG members had received threatening phone
calls demanding that they give up the search. A day later, experts working for
the federal prosecutor's office replied that the area had already been
investigated and human remains exhumed the previous week, but the UPOEG
insisted that they had found "freshly buried flesh" and that the area
reeked of "a foul
odour", an unbearable stench of recently dumped corpses", and that
"neighbours said that as late as a few nights ago they still heard
moaning." (Sources:La Jornada,24
October, print edition, p. 7; and 25 October, p. 3)

11. A "sea of
secret mass graves" and the story of other people disappeared by the army: As a leader of the Iguala Front for Dignity
and Respect for Life (FIDRV) says, "Iguala is a city surrounded by a sea
of secret mass graves." The state and federal authorities knew about
generalized massacres long before 26 September, and it was no surprise to
"find" mass graves. Graves with 19 bodies were dug up last May, and
since January 2014, 81 corpses have appeared, without counting the 28 exhumed 5
October, and doubtlessly there are many more.

The fact that the army is
guilty of at least some of these previous murders was documented in a recent AP
report regarding a 2010 incident when the army disappeared Francis García
Orozco, 32, and Vladimir Lenin Pita, 17. Witnesses and a video document that
the two were carried off by soldiers while transporting the sound system for a
nightclub in a fairground. The two are still missing and the crime remains
unpunished. (Sources:La
Jornada,print edition,23 October 2014, p. 5; “Hunt for
43 students highlights Mexico’s missing”, Associated Press online, 22 October
2014; Sanjuana Martinez,La
Jornadaonline, 19 October
2014)

Further, millions of
people are now aware that the army executed 21 youth who had surrendered to
them in Tlatlaya, in the state of Mexico. There is no room for doubt – the
armed forces are murdering many people in cold blood, especially lower-class
youth and activists such as the Ayotzinapa students.

12. The federal government
knew about mayor Abarca's previous crimes and covered them up:The federal government is also responsible
for the murders and disappearances because it covered up the murder of Arturo
Hernandez and two other comrades of the Iguala People's United Front (UPI) on 30
May 2013. Murillo Karam and Interior Minister Osorio Chong denied having any
knowledge of these murders, but that's a crude lie. The case was widely exposed
on the Web; Arturo
Hernandez's wife accused mayor Abarca of having committed these murders; and a
kidnapping survivor testified that he saw Abarca personally kill Hernandez with
a shot to the head and another in the chest. This eyewitness gave a sworn
statement to a notary public in the Federal District and repeated it to a
agency of the Public Ministry in March 2014.
The Decade of Impunity Solidarity Network (RSDIAC), headed by Bishop Raul Vera
Lopez, had been demanding that the attorney general open a case against Abarca
for more than a year before the attack of the Ayotzinapa students in Iguala. The
Attorney General's office told RSDIAC members that they "didn't want to
take action against the
Iguala mayor because he had jurisdiction". And now they want to tell us
that they never knew anything about this matter?!

Raul Vera said that the
kidnapping of eight People's United Front members and the killing of three of
them is a precedent that explains what happened to the Ayotzinapa students:
"Here we have a situation in which clearly the priority is to cover up
everything – Abarca kidnapped, tortured and murdered, and nothing happened. Now
they're going after police, but we want an exposure of the bigshots who are
responsible." (Source: Arturo Rodriguez Garcia, "El Estado se
convirtio en una 'institucion criminal'",Proceso,12 October 2014.

13. Excuses for the
murderers, criminalization of the victims:Federal prosecutorMurillo Karam's 22 October press conference
is an example of his defence of the Iguala authorities and police and the
federal government's efforts to criminalize the students. He didn't take into
consideration any of the testimony of the assaulted students; everything he
said was based on the "testimony" of police, municipal civil
servants, hired gunmen and the supposed leaders of the Guerreros Unidos drug
cartel.

He lied when he said that the reason for
the attack was "to keep the students from 'sabotaging' the party [hosted
by the mayor's wife]." The first attack began when the students had
already passed by the venue, without getting out of the buses or even stopping,
and they were about to leave the city. Police vehicles blocked the road and
didn't let them leave. Thus the prosecutor painted a brutal massacre almost as
if it were an act of self-defence on the part of the local authorities. He also
implied that the Guerreros Unidos were just defending their territory against
"rival criminals". (Source: press conference byMurillo Karam, 22 October 2014,Boletin, 198/14)

14. The federal government continues
assaulting and torturing people since the federal police took over public (in)security in Iguala,
invading villages, beating and torturing many people, and carrying away many
people they accused of ties with drug trafficking. (Sources:La Jornada,print edition, 25 October 2014, p. 3,
and 29 October, p. 5.)

In short, not just the Iguala municipal
government and its police but also the state and federal governments and their
police and armed forces are murderers, torturers and kidnappers – and totally
illegitimate.

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